The Legacy of American Slavery

In 1619, roughly 20 Africans were brought to the American colony, Point Comfort in Virginia. They would be the first of an estimated 30,000 Africans to be sold into slavery in America.



This would establish the fate of African Americans forever.

With the abolishment of the Atlantic Slave Trade the domestic slave trade saw a large boom with slaves being ported mostly around the Southern States.

In New Orleans, adults in their prime years were mostly worth ~$1000, with children and elderly being sold for less than $500

In 1861 the American Civil war started between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederate.

This was a war fought for the freedom of slaves.

In 1865, victory for the Union saw slavery being abolished America.

But this would not be the end of the persecution of African Americans.

Freedom for Slaves did not mean they were treated equally.

This data is far from exhaustive but gives some indication to the extent of injustice. Nearly 30 years after this the civil rights movement would do a lot to bring rights to the descendants of slaves.

Black people have been and still are disproportionately stuck in poverty when compared to White people. While things have gotten much better, there is still a long way until equality.

With higher rates of poverty. Black people have less opportunity for upward mobility. Children to Black parents are much less likely to earn a Bachelors degree and are more likely than Children to White parents to not even graduate High School.

In the study “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective” by Chetty 2018, it was found that the Children of Black Parents had mostly landed in lower quintile brackets based on their individual income.

Black Males born into poor families end up doing worse than their parents which in contrast to White Males who have obtained a higher income than their parents.

Slavery in America ended less than 200 years ago. But the Legacy of Slavery is still felt to this day.

Figure 1 - Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Tracy Kugler, Steven Ruggles. (2020). IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 15.0 [dataset]. IPUMS. Retrieved October 25, 2020 from http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V15.0

Figure 2 - Chris Crawford. (2017). New Orlean’s Slave Sales A dataset of 15,377 slave sales from 1856 - 1861, Version 1. Retrieved October 25, 2020 from https://www.kaggle.com/crawford/new-orleans-slave-sales.

Figure 3 - Rachael Tatman. (2017). Historical American Lynching Information on 2806 lynchings in the United States, Version 1. Retrieved October 25, 2020 from https://www.kaggle.com/rtatman/historical-american-lynching.

Figure 4 U.S. Census Bureau (2019). Table B-5. Poverty Status of People by Family Relationship, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1959 to 2019. Retrieved October 27, 2020 from https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/income-poverty/p60-270.html

Figures 5 & 6 Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, Sonya R. Porter. (2018) Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective. Retrieved October 31 , 2020 from https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/race/

Figure 7 Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, Sonya R. Porter.(2018) The Opportunity Atlas. Retrieved October 30, 2020 from https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ *Obtained Individual Income for Low Income, White and Black Race respectively, filtering for Males.